VIENNA!

Dear Caroline,

I am so happy I got a week in Vienna, there is no way I would have survived living in that rooming house for another moment. The hotel in Vienna was gorgeous! Absolute luxury. It’s all Paris themed which is very à propos. Im sharing my room with my bonus sister Tara. The hotel has a great restaurant but the highlight is the bakery downstairs. It’s famous in the area. It’s called Moto Brot, and I lived in that little bakery. The croissants were French, your dad would have loved them. Buttery and flakey, oh and the almond croissants were to die for!

Vienna is the stereotypical European city. The buildings are old and ornate but filled with modern shops or mom and pop establishments. The Viennese love their chocolate, and Mozart, every few feet there’s a chocolate shop or a tourist shop with Mozart plastered all over. They also love their beer, which is very German of them.

Vienna was so fun. I met a whole bunch of new family, and saw my dad. I missed him so much and after the struggles in Nice it was nice to have a friendly face greeting me. It had been 5 months since I last saw him so it was a very warm homecoming.

Remember Vero Beach with the whole family there. We were all over the place. It was a challenge to get us all on the same page… well in Vienna we were 25 family members. It was a logistical nightmare but still so fun. My dad had a motto the whole trip, which most of us started to adopt as well: “I’m just holding the end of the rope” as in he’s just along for the ride and going with the flow.

We walked everywhere, which is the best part of European cities. Everything is walking distance and if it isn’t the metro is super easy to use and takes you nearly everywhere. We went to the Belvedere. I think it used to be a castle and now it’s an art gallery. I’ve only been to the national art gallery in Berlin and then saw all the art in the churches of Rome, but from that comparisons I would say that the art in the Belvedere is a little “newer” it also had more modern art than I’ve previously visited. In Paris the big art piece that people make the pilgrimage to is the Mona Lisa, here in Vienna it’s The Kiss by Klimt. It really is a magnificent piece of art covered in gold leaf, there’s even a movie about Klimt’s art work post war that is very good.

After the all the art I needed a snack and when in Vienna you must have chocolate… and cake. I had the Sisi cake which is a chocolate cake with marzipan, it was named after the Empress Elizabeth. It is the perfect cake, not too sweet and not too chocolatey but still not the grocery store chocolate cake that I’ve been craving.

It was so hot in Vienna that for the rest of the week I relaxed in the hotel with the glorious air conditioning. We did go see Barbie at the cinema. It was good but not my kind of movie. I would have preferred to have seen Oppenheimer.

All in all Vienna was great and I cannot wait to go back in November. The Christmas Markets will be set up by then. Maybe I’ll find some cool things for Christmas.

They are calling my flight back to Nice, I better get going.